Detecting Dyslexia Early

Typically, children with dyslexia are not diagnosed until third grade, but, ideally, interventions are most effective if they begin before they learn to read. So, the recent post “Brain Scans Can Spot Early Signs of Dyslexia, Study Shows” on Huff Parents is compelling. A team from the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children’s Hospital Boston have seen signs of dyslexia on the brain scans of children as young as 4 and 5, the time when children respond best to interventions. In the past, children are diagnosed when they are 8 or 9, three years of struggling.

Parents should know that some early signs of dyslexia “might include difficulty with rhyming, mispronouncing words or confusing similar-sounding words.” April Benasich, director of the Carter Center for Neurocognitive Research at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and who did not participate in this study, hopes that this study will inspire parents to get their children assessed at an early age by their pediatricians.